SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: ACAPULCO LIPS – NOW

ACAPULCO LIPS
NOW
KILLROOM RECORDS

Acapulco Lips’ new album, Now, certainly opens with a bang. The first track, “Welcome To The Other Side”, sounds like the theme song to a groovy ‘60s cartoon about a girl group that goes around a beachfront town playing rock music and solving mysteries. The Seattle-based band, now on its second album, is known for music that calls to mind the sun-drenched psychedelic pop of the 1960s Laurel Canyon scene. But despite its jangly sound, there is an underlying sense of doom that pervades the record.

Of the album, bassist/vocalist Maria-Elena Herrell says, “I’d say pretty much every single song on Now goes back to the theme of time. There’s an urgency that comes with understanding you can’t get it back, and you don’t know how much you’ll get.”

The nostalgic sound of Now makes for a good storytelling device. In particular, the lyrics of “Happy Were the Days” indicate a yearning for long-ago better times: “Happy were the days now so far in the past/I wish that I could go back”. The combination of Herrell’s girlish crooning and the dark, psych-rock instrumentals make it sound like something The Shangri-Las might come up with after a bad acid trip with The Rolling Stones. “Fuzzy Sunshine” is a similarly moody track with a catchy melody that bounces right along into uncertainty.

The instrumental “Pas d’echappatoire” has an especially gritty feel. Guitarist Christopher Garland rips it up all over this tune with dramatic fuzz-guitar riffs that wouldn’t feel out of place in a chase scene from the 1962 Bond flick Dr. No. Drummer Jordan Adams carries the song to a satisfying climax.

The penultimate track “So Many Miles”, borrows a little too heavily from its 1960s influences and ends up a seeming a bit unoriginal. The inclusion of the “Be My Baby” drumbeat, which can be found in dozens upon dozens of girl-group style songs, is a somewhat tired reference.

Now closes with “See You on the Other Side”, a great send-off that starts off in the bouncy cartoon theme song style of the opening number and slides into something hypnotic and entrancing. It’s a great way to end an album that both pays tribute to and subverts the sounds of the 1960s. Acapulco Lips has a nuanced understanding of its mid-century influences and is interested in doing more with the surf-rock sound than simply imitating its predecessors.

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